Roy Moore Sues Sacha Baron Cohen Over ‘Who Is America?’ Segment

The first season of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America? just wrapped its first season on Showtime, but the fallout of the former Borat star’s latest confrontational comedy series will be around for a while. For one thing, there’s now a lawsuit between Cohen and one of his guests on the show, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice and United States Senate candidate, Roy Moore.

Moore is asking for a whopping $95 million from Cohen for what he describes as “fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation.” In the scene from Who Is America?, Cohen interviews Moore in character as Israeli “anti-terror expert” Erran Morad. He claims to be testing out a piece of Israeli technology that can supposedly detect child molesters. He tries it on Moore, and it keeps “malfunctioning” and beeping when Cohen wands him. “Did you lend the jacket to somebody else?” Cohen quips in character.

Moore walked out of the interview eventually, but he now claims in his lawsuit that the portion that aired “has severely harmed” his reputation and “caused him, Mrs. Moore, and his entire family severe emotional distress, as well as caused and will cause Plaintiffs financial damage.” I’m not sure all of that is necessarily true after the particulars of his Senate campaign, but I am no legal expert.

If you’re so inclined, you can read the text of the suit over at Variety. And if you want to watch the segment in question you’ll find a link below. At the moment, Who Is America?’s future on Showtime is uncertain; it will be interesting to see whether this development plays into whether we get a Season 2 or not.